Mobile growth fuelled by smartphones

Being a cutting-edge tech guy (supposedly), it’s easy to forget that there’s a ridiculous number of people out there using non-smartphones. Indeed, I met three people just the other day with Nokia 1800s. Fantastic.

The overall mobile market (that's smart and dumbphones) grew almost 20% from Q1 2010 to Q1 2011, according to the International Data Corporation Worldwide Mobile Phone Tracker. The growth was said to be fuelled largely by smartphones.

The table makes for interesting reading. Nokia, fairly synonymous with both doom and gloom at the moment, still holds a 29.2% share of the mobile market, however that’s down over 5% from last year.

Apple, meanwhile, has crept up from 2.8% in Q1 2010 to 5% in Q1 2011. So one in twenty people with a phone has an iPhone. That’s doesn't seem too far fetched.

The Californians are actually in fourth place, with second and third going to South Korea. Claiming the silver medal is Samsung with 18.8% market share, and LG takes bronze with 6.6%.

The number of phones being move around is inconceivably large. Apparently 310.5 million units were shipped in Q1 2010, rising to 371.8 million in Q1 2011. That’s a lot of bloody phones.